On the domain‐specificity of the visual and non‐visual face‐selective regions. (1st July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Axelrod, Vadim
• Editors: Rousselet, Guillaume
• Is Part Of: European journal of neuroscience. Volume 44:Number 4(2016:Aug.)
• Page Start: 2049
• Page End: 2063
• Publication Date: 2016-07-01
• Subjects: domain‐general processing -- face‐selective network -- functional MRI -- non‐preferred processing -- prefrontal cortex; Nervous system -- Periodicals; 612.8
• DOI: 10.1111/ejn.13290
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0953-816X

Abstract

Abstract: What happens in our brains when we see a face? The neural mechanisms of face processing – namely, the face‐selective regions – have been extensively explored. Research has traditionally focused on visual cortex face‐regions; more recently, the role of face‐regions outside the visual cortex (i.e., non‐visual‐cortex face‐regions) has been acknowledged as well. The major quest today is to reveal the functional role of each this region in face processing. To make progress in this direction, it is essential to understand the extent to which the face‐regions, and particularly the non‐visual‐cortex face‐regions, process only faces (i.e., face‐specific, domain‐specific processing) or rather are involved in a more domain‐general cognitive processing. In the current functional MRI study, we systematically examined the activity of the whole face‐network during face‐unrelated reading task (i.e., written meaningful sentences with content unrelated to faces/people and non‐words). We found that the non‐visual‐cortex (i.e., right lateral prefrontal cortex and posterior superior temporal sulcus), but not the visual cortex face‐regions, responded significantly stronger to sentences than to non‐words. In general, some degree of sentence selectivity was found in all non‐visual‐cortex cortex. Present result highlights the possibility that the processing in the non‐visual‐cortex face‐selective regions might not be exclusively face‐specific, but rather more or even fully domain‐general. In this paper, we illustrate how the knowledge about domain‐general processing in face‐regions can help to advance our general understanding of face processing mechanisms. Our results therefore suggest that the problem of face processing should be approached in the broader scope of cognition in general. Abstract : This study investigated whether face‐selective network processes only faces or rather is involved in a more domain‐general cognitive processing. We found that face‐selective regions outside visual cortex, but not visual‐cortex face‐regions responded stronger to meaningful sentences than to meaningless non‐words. We explain and illustrate how the knowledge about domain‐general processing in face‐regions can help to advance our general understanding of face processing mechanisms.